


Never Stopped

by joycecarolnotes



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Violence, Infidelity, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2018-10-20 21:05:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10670736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joycecarolnotes/pseuds/joycecarolnotes
Summary: Years after having an affair, Richard and Jared meet again, at Richard's wedding.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first chapter of something that started as a prompt from @ten-bobcats and that I've been working on for nearly a full year, much to my own frustration. I suppose I'm posting it in hopes someone will encourage me to finally get there!

_Why the fuck do I have to wear this_ , Richard thought, leaning toward the large, gold-plated mirror in his embarrassingly opulent hotel suite. _If this is supposed to be the best day of my life, why should I have to spend it looking like a moron, in a sweaty, uncomfortable tuxedo, choking on a bowtie I can't even tie right._

If it was up to Richard, he would've gotten married in a hoodie and jeans. He would've gone to City Hall, not to the fucking Palace. He would've invited a few people he genuinely gave a shit about, instead of hundreds he'd never even met. But it wasn't up to Richard. None of it was. Ever since the buyout, and since the other guys left him, ever since his life had become nothing but an endless succession of media opportunities and investor dinners and soulless, phony, bloodsucking Pied Piper Foundation charity events, nothing had felt like it was up to Richard at all.

"Goddamnit," Richard murmured to himself as the loop of his bowtie came loose again. "God god god fucking damnit."

There was a knock then, gentle and quiet, on the door to his room. Could they not see he'd put up the Do Not Disturb sign? 

Though he was constantly reminded of how stupid it was - "repulsive and juvenile, Richard" - he insisted on leaving the sign up through the duration of every hotel stay. Would rather the towels and pillowcases and bedsheets went unchanged for days on end than risk some member of the hotel staff walking in on them, or snooping around his things while he was out.

Another knock. Still soft, still gentle. Richard padded across the thick, plush carpet and, enough for the chain to catch, cracked open the door. He looked through the gap at the person standing before him. _Surprise, surprise_ , thought Richard, and even more surprising (Richard thought, though he made no plans to admit it), it was a decidedly pleasant one. Like finding something you hadn't realized was missing. Or like the glasses he'd finally agreed to after months of squinting at his laptop; things he hadn't realized were out of focus became suddenly, shockingly clear.

"Jared," he said, almost breathless. "I didn't think you'd be here."

"Yes, well." Jared shrugged his shoulders. He smiled a little sheepishly. "I heard _someone_ would be wearing a very nice tuxedo, and I couldn't miss the chance to see."

"Do you want to come in," asked Richard. He gestured at the bowtie dangling lamely around his neck. "Maybe you can help me tie this thing."

Jared stepped back, moments later, admiring his handiwork in the suite's dim, romantic lighting. How much he'd missed that look, thought Richard. That admiration, that dedication, that sense that when Jared focused on him, nothing could go wrong, and that even if it did, somehow it couldn't hurt him quite as badly. He remembered how he used to go to Jared, even after everything. Afternoons spent in the dingy, windowless apartment where Jared lived then. Too hot always, because of the broken thermostat. Digging his fingernails into Jared's broad shoulders, gasping his name into the dark. Then, back to Richard's own house, cold and dispassionate, more of a museum really, in the most glamorous part of town.

"You look so handsome, Richard," Jared said. "I - I don't mean to - but, oh, you must know that I - "

"Don't say it, Jared." Richard pressed his eyes shut tight. He reached up to rub the dull ache from his temples. "Just. Please, please don't."

"Richard" - as much as he tried not to, Richard couldn't help it then; he was weak for it, and he opened his eyes and looked up into Jared's and he sank down into them, and back into their past together, too, all the memories so warm and comfortable and tender, and so accessible to him, as if years hadn't passed but days, or even hours - "Richard, I've never stopped loving you."

\--

 _There's something cold and mechanical about the way he fucks_ , thought Richard, on his hands and knees, at the bottom of the mattress, waiting - not so patiently - again.

There was something mathematical about it. Something passionless. Something dull. It wasn't that it was bad exactly. There were times, in fact, when it had been quite excellent. But Richard's partner was good in a way that felt practiced. His thrusts, long and languid. Perfectly spread out, evenly paced. The sounds he made - low, staccato grunts - rehearsed and calculated, as if he'd learned them from television. Even his body, which was nice, undoubtedly - impeccably well-groomed and cared for - seemed made for the cover of Men's Health, not to go to bed with Richard.

 _He_ knows _he's good_ , thought Richard, bitterly. And maybe that was what bothered him most about it. 

Richard stifled a small yelp as he shoved his way inside him. He kept his head down, bit hard into his lip, willed himself not to look up at the opulent, metallic wallpaper, the satin pillowcases, the life-size portrait installed directly above the bed. And it went on and on like that, on and on and on and on, until Richard began chanting "faster, faster, fuck me, faster, faster, come on" in frustration, never quite sure if he was begging for more or if he just wanted it to be over with.

\--

"Holy shit it's better with you," Richard said, panting, his back arching up off the thin futon mattress, fingers clawing into green flannel sheets.

It _was_ better with Jared. It was. Sloppy, sometimes, still. Messy and imperfect and strange. While his partner would pound at Richard for hours, until he felt almost hypnotically bored, sometimes either he or Jared or both would get so excited they'd barely last a minute. And while his life at home was a series of trite routines from which he rarely deviated, Jared was insatiably hungry for new ideas, suggestions, praise, constructive criticism, new things he could do or try to make Richard feel good. In many ways, they were still figuring it out, but if anything that only brought them closer.

Jared came up to lay beside him, and when he'd caught his breath a little, Richard looked over at his face. A face he loved so dearly, its odd yet striking features, so contemplative and serious and sweet. 

But Richard saw none of the happiness he expected to see there. None of the peaceful, placid, dumbstruck relief Jared usually wore immediately after an orgasm. There was only hurt, instead, and something akin to bitterness. Something strange and unfamiliar, unsuited to Jared's face.

"What is it," Richard asked.

Jared rolled onto his side, facing away from him. "It's nothing," he answered, the sound muffled, as if he was chewing on his lip.

Richard sat up to get a better look at Jared. He examined his pinched, closed-off expression. The way he'd pressed his eyes shut, like he didn't want them to reveal what he was feeling. Like he had a secret to keep. 

"Clearly," Richard scoffed, "it's not nothing."

A long moment of quiet settled between them. Outside, tires rumbled on cement. The radiator whined, exhausted. 

"It's just, well," Jared began, with what seemed a herculean effort, like he deeply feared the consequences of what he was about to say. "I'd rather not be reminded of him. Reminded, you know." He traced unreadable patterns with his long fingers on the sheets, and willed his eyes not to look up and meet Richard's. "That we don't really belong to each other."

"Yes we do. We do," Richard said, insistently. He ran his fingers through the soft strands of Jared's hair, then traced along the edge of his earlobe, briefly, until Jared pushed his hand away. 

"Fuck," said Richard. "Jared. Come on. Birdie. I meant it as a compliment."

"Please don't call me that," said Jared, unusually curt, when usually he thrilled at hearing Richard's private nickname for him. 

Richard sighed. He raked a hand through his own sweaty hair and felt the frustration inside him begin to ossify into anger, the feeling - however irrational - that he had been somehow wronged, and that he required retribution. "Jesus christ," Richard spit the words out, wetly. "What the fuck. Am I not allowed to be nice to you now?"

Jared winced. He curled up reflexively, knees pressed to his chest - his entire posture an apology - and Richard wondered how someone as tall as he was could manage to take up so little space. Thought, sadly, of how Jared had learned it was often for the best to do that.

"I'm trying to tell you how to be nice to me," Jared said, at last, and his voice was a broken whisper, small as he'd made himself seem.

Richard knew how hard it was for Jared to admit to not liking something. To express any sort of discomfort. To ask for much of anything at all. He knew that he was being cruel - perhaps unforgivably - and yet he couldn't stop himself. There was something inside him - something stubborn and rigid and hard like logic, something that'd developed over years of never getting what he felt that he deserved, something he barely wanted to acknowledge - and it begged, now, for victory. To prove his point, no matter what it took, or what he lost in the process.

"Oh like you're perfect," Richard said, bitterly. "You have sex with other people all the time."

"What an unfair thing to say to me," Jared observed, with an almost eerie calmness, as if he were commenting on the conversation from outside. He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again it was steely, even-keeled and well-measured, like they were at a business meeting, not naked together in bed. "Have I slept with other people? Yes. But, my goodness, Richard, I don't live with them. I don't appear with them on magazine covers. They don't bring up marriage and ask to meet my family."

"Well, obviously not. I mean the - the family part - because you - you know, because you don't have a - one of those," Richard rambled, talking himself further with each word into a pit he sensed he would not be able to claw back out of. He stood and began to gather his belongings, boxers and jeans snatched from a haphazard pile on the floor. Richard stepped into them, catching a heel awkwardly on the hem of his pants and nearly toppling over. 

"Richard," said Jared, and the kindness in his voice turned Richard's stomach. He reached over, pressed cool fingers against the hand-shaped bruise on Richard's hipbone, the one they both had seen earlier, but which neither of them had acknowledged. With his other hand, he touched the small cut next to Richard's left eye. "I know it's hard," he said, "and I know that sometimes the people who hurt you can make you feel like there's no way out, but Richard, listen, there is one. There is." 

Richard remembered countless pep talks just like this one Jared had given him whenever it seemed like things at Pied Piper were fucked beyond repair. Always the same tone of sincerity tinged with desperation, always so much more than Richard could bear. 

Jared swallowed hard. He took one of Richard’s hands and held it, the way he always did: tenderly, like it was the most important thing in the universe. "Richard," he said, and it wasn't quite pleading, but almost. "I want you to leave him. If you won't do it for yourself, do it for me then."

"Sure." Richard tore his hand away, laughing, mirthless and vicious and mean. "Sure thing," he barked. "You know I always knew it was bullshit when you said you understood."

Richard opened the door, painfully aware that this could be the last moment he'd ever spend in Jared's apartment. In his bed. In his arms. Looking up from beneath him. The only place he felt at home.

"Richard, Richard, please," said Jared, and he was truly pleading - begging - hurt and wild and desperate for Richard - now. 

But Richard didn't turn back, because he knew that if he did he'd fall to his knees, and lay his head in Jared's lap, and beg for his forgiveness. "You can keep my things," he said. "I'll just get new ones."


	2. Chapter 2

Jared wondered - fresh from the quiet but tense poolside conversation in which Richard had informed him of his plans to sell the company - if there was another world, different from this one.

Was there another world. Another timeline. Some alternative way events might've played out. It was a thought that had followed Jared, in homes and schools and jobs and cities, through nearly every moment of his tempestuous, tumultuous life. Was there a world, he would wonder, where he might've made the perfect speech, performed the perfect grand, romantic gesture, something out of one of those old movies he loved so dearly, something foolish, and impassioned, and impulsive, no doubt. A world where he kept Richard from signing those papers. Held Pied Piper together. Kept them all from falling apart.

Should he have told Richard right then and there that he loved him? Confessed to quite how badly watching Richard leave would break his heart?

Perhaps there was another world, Jared would think, where fate stepped in to save them at the very last minute. Where some strange, unforeseen diversion altered the course of their lives. Most of all though, Jared would wonder if there might've ever been a world where he might've gotten over Richard. Someplace where perhaps his instincts for self-preservation were a bit more well-cultivated. Where he wouldn't give his own heart away quite so recklessly. Wouldn't fall so deeply, irrevocably in love.

"I'll do what I can to help with the transition," Jared had said, looking down at Richard, illuminated by the pool lights' eerie blue glow. "But you must know that - oh Richard, you must know that when you go there, I can't come with you."

There was, after all, no provision for Jared's continued employment in the contract.

Richard shook his head a little wildly, as if to dislodge the words he'd just heard. "But Jared no," he protested. "Without you I can't - "

"You can," Jared said, and it was a pledge, a promise. He placed a firm, supportive hand on Richard's shoulder. Desperately, achingly sincere. "It's a big corporation. They have more excellent biz dev people than you'll know what to do with. Trust me. I believe in you. You'll be fine."

They looked at each other for a long moment, both aware that Jared wasn't just talking about the business. That Richard's decision would alter their relationship in a number of irreversible ways. The friendship they'd built, the intimacy they'd developed, something strange and new and unfamiliar to them, grown like a garden, slowly, and with great care.

"Don't do this to me," Richard pleaded. He reached up and grabbed Jared's wrist. "Don't do this."

Jared wondered then - extricating himself from Richard's grasp and making his way, grimly, back into the garage, to his illicit sleeping quarters - and would continue to wonder, many times, if he might've ever gotten over Richard. If there was some crucial moment when it could have happened. Some opportunity he might have missed.

It was Jared's saving grace to've been gifted with a wonderful imagination. It sustained him through long and lonely nights locked up in that old toolshed as a child, turning a plastic bag into a beloved stuffed animal, dreaming up Harriet Tubman or Anne Frank as an imaginary friend. Even now, Jared's imagination conjured extraordinary visions: a majestic condor in its nest, a gorgeous island wedding. The only thing he could never seem to imagine was a world where he stopped loving Richard.

He did try, a little. Bringing home the nice receptionist at his new office and putting his face between her legs for an hour, doing much the same with a man who approached him at a bar.

"I'll call you later," Jared would say, like reading from a script as he walked them to the doorway after, and they would play their part well, not demanding too much or asking many questions, smiling and nodding along pleasantly.

Jared wouldn't call them though, and they wouldn't call him either. For the next night and the next night, Jared would sleep alone.

In this world, the only person who would come calling was Richard.

\--

It was easy, at first, just like everybody said it would be.

Easy not to have to figure everything out for himself. To leave it in the hands of the more experienced, proficient, and confident people who surrounded him. Easy to give away fractions of the things he cared about, piece by minuscule piece, until he was left with nearly nothing. To pretend it didn't kill him inside to abandon his dreams and his passion.

It was easy, too, giving himself over to the power of a more powerful man. Letting himself be bossed around and talked down to and demanded of, until the demands became a little too demanding, until his possessive grip on Richard proved asphyxiatingly tight.

It was easy going home with him that first time, and it only got easier thereafter, in a "resigned to your fate" sort of way. It was easy to just lie there, barely a participant. To let himself be bossed around and talked down to and demanded of in the bedroom, just like he did in every other aspect of his life.

It was all so easy, at first.

Until it wasn't.

\--

Backstage before their first joint TED talk, a little more than a year in: Richard panted and sweat through the thick fabric of a brand new bespoke suit, cut to fit his body, make him look like an adult, like an authority on something, like an approximation of a person anybody ought to bother listening to. He heard the roar of the crowd in the auditorium and found himself suddenly hunched over, hyperventilating, in a backroom corner instead.

Richard's partner pulled him up roughly by the shoulders and, for the first but not the last time, struck him hard across the face.

"A reality check," he said, and "Richard, you needed that," as Richard spit a little blood out into a nearby trashcan.

"Jesus fucking christ. Pull yourself together. For fuck's sake." He tugged Richard close by the fabric of his carefully pressed white collar. Adjusted it almost violently. "You need to fundamentally alter everything about yourself. Grow up. Cut the juvenile horseshit."

Richard looked into his face, which was hard as stone, and cold, and unforgiving. _I miss Jared_ , he thought, with an unexpected anguish. The thought itself was a shock, seeming to rise out of a place inside himself Richard was sure - by now, nearly a year since he'd last seen Jared - had been dismantled.

_Jared never would've treated me like this._

_Jared would've been nice to me._

Richard skipped out early, canceling his appearance, feigning food poisoning for publicity's sake. He waited on a park bench outside for an Uber, feeling every second like an impostor and a swindler and a fake.

He thought of all the things he missed. Not just Jared's support, or his kindness, but all the jittery, fucked-up, sleepless nights they'd spent working together, too. All the failure and the trouble and the stress. Things were easier now, yes, but Richard hated it. Missed the days of being, always, up against some deadline, fighting off some crisis, surviving - if you could call it that - by the skin of their teeth. He felt a genuine ache in his chest at the loss of it, and a deeper ache still at the sense there was nothing he could've done to fracture either Jared's or his own resolve to leave.

Those last days with Pied Piper, Richard thought, had been like standing at the edge of a great chasm. Someone had extended a firm and stable bridge from the other side of it, and yet there was Jared, still expecting him to blindly leap.

How stupid he'd thought it was then, and now, how much he missed it. That foolish, dogged, pathological faith.

He wanted nothing more, he realized, than to see Jared's face. And when he wanted to see him, he wanted to see him then. Now. As soon as humanly possible.

"I have, ah, sorry. Change of destination," Richard told his Uber driver, nervously, paging through his contacts for Jared's new address.

\--

"Oh! Richard," Jared exclaimed, at the doorway. "Don't you look lovely! What a delight."

"Can I come in," Richard asked, hurriedly, glancing behind him like he expected a specter lurking over his shoulder, dragging a nervous hand through his hair.

"Yes of course." 

Jared ushered Richard into his shabby, spare, but neatly-kept apartment, and apologized profusely for the mess. "Can I get you something?" he asked, and flitted off to fetch some tea from the hotplate without waiting for an answer.

The place was... not nice. An ugly brown carpet, dirty wood-paneled walls, no windows. One room and what you could only very generously refer to as a kitchen. An ancient heater in the corner, mewling like a dying cat. Jared set two teacups down on two ceramic bird coasters, joining Richard on the lumpy, uncomfortable couch.

It was strange at first, they both thought, being alone together after all those months apart. Each of them privately wondering if the distance would be unbreachable, but once they started talking, finding it remarkably easy to traverse.

When Richard left that day, he asked when he could see Jared again.

"As soon as you can," Jared told him.

So, twice a week, they met at Jared's apartment. Stolen, sacred blocks of time they guarded with a tenacious vigilance. It wasn't hard, like they'd feared, to reconstruct their old closeness. It turned out that caring for each other the way they did was one of those things you never forgot. They talked about their jobs, some. Their old friends, a little. Books Jared had read. Documentaries they'd seen. Richard's sightings with his telescope. They said nice, nostalgic things about each other, and each of them told the other he was missed. There was one thing, though, between them, and it was a monolith: the thing they never talked about, performed elaborate feats of conversational gymnastics to avoid. Richard never brought it up. Jared didn't press him.

Jared knew Richard was with someone. He knew it was a man. His boss. He suspected that he treated Richard poorly. There had to be a reason, he thought, why Richard kept their friendship a secret, why he hemmed and hawed so profoundly over going home.

Jared didn't mind. He found ways to talk around it. Knew from experience that when a person was resigned to staying with someone bad for them, there was little you could say to change their mind. It was only long after Richard left that he would find himself, alone in bed, hot and wrung-out, too exhausted to rest, aching with a desire for Richard that never went away no matter what he did about it, mad with jealousy.

It almost felt like they could keep it up forever.

Until it didn't.

\--

Richard burst in one day, ranting and raving, pacing the short length of Jared's apartment like a convict in a cell. Angrier, more indignant and frustrated, than Jared had ever seen him.

"He doesn't have time for this in his busy schedule, y'know. He doesn't want to hear about how hard this all is for me. Or about my fucked up stomach problems. Or that I had a panic attack on the way to his fucking holistic healer to talk about my fucking panic attacks. Richard grow up. Richard get it together. Richard miraculously change every fucking thing about yourself." Richard sighed, deeply, from the bottom of his chest, and his anger seemed to melt away into sorrow, and he collapsed down on the couch beside Jared, hanging his head in his hands. "I don't know. He's right. Erlich, too. I am a loser. Useless. Fucking dumb. No one takes me seriously. I can't wear those suits he puts me in. I look like a fucking kid."

"No," Jared tried. He rested his hand on Richard's back. Moved it, gently, up and down, when Richard didn't protest. "You're perfect."

"Jared that's - " Richard began, but he found himself blushing, and then laughing, so hard he could barely speak. "That's objectively false," he mumbled, embarrassed, to the floor beneath him.

"You are to me," said Jared. And when Richard looked up again, Jared was looking back at him, so sweet and concerned and doting and attentive, the way he always did. _Handsome_ , Richard thought, too. 

"God, Jared. I forgot how good it feels."

"What?"

"Ah," said Richard, and he leaned in closer, closer, close enough that Jared could see the small flecks of different colors in his otherwise blue eyes. "The way you look at me."

It happened not long after.

Richard angled his mouth up toward Jared. Jared put his hand on the back of his neck. Their first kiss was nervous. The one after it was not. It happened so quickly, they had their clothes off on the couch. Richard pressed himself between Jared's thighs and they moved against each other, hastily.

"Sorry," Richard mumbled, chewing on one of his knuckles, as they lay together in the aftermath. "Fuck, I'm bad at this."

"When do you have to leave?" Jared tried not to sound like it broke his heart, and he didn't say why, or where Richard was going. He didn't need to. Both of them knew.

Richard glanced at the clock. "I've got a couple hours."

"Well then," Jared said, "we have time to practice." He smiled, and the smile was really almost completely genuine, and he led Richard across the small room to his bed, which was actually a futon, and he wrapped one of Richard's legs around him, and he climbed beneath the sheets.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had no intention of ever updating this story again, but then I spent a while the other day thinking about how much Jared would like Ani DiFranco's "Dilate" album, and how it gives me a lot of feelings about this particular little universe. So I recommend you read this while listening to "Napoleon" on repeat, because that's exactly how I wrote it!
> 
> Thank you to the two or so people who are still at all interested in this.

Nearly all the time they spent together, they spent in Jared's apartment. Often in bed, sometimes on the sofa. They felt safe there together, and they were afraid of being seen outside.

It wasn't much but it was theirs, and they could touch each other as much as they wanted there, and they could love each other as much as they wanted there, and together, they made it feel like an entire world. Hours in bed, cataloging the imperfections in each other's bodies. Kisses mapped over miles of pale and sun-starved skin. The patient, accepting way Jared considered Richard's scrawny figure - all the things his partner was always after him to fix or change or augment - as if what Jared cherished most about him were the things others found most difficult to tolerate.

"I like it when you pull my hair," said Richard.

And, "yeah yeah, Jared, use your teeth a little."

And, "I think I might like it if you tied me up sometime."

Nothing he could say or think or do was ever too _weird_ for Jared, who let the unusual roll off his back as if it were absurdly commonplace. _You're like me_ , Richard would think, as Jared confided in him another bizarre tale from his miserable, tumultuous childhood. _I mean, not that I've - not that I've been_ there, _you know, exactly, but we're the weird ones, I mean. You and me_.

\--

"He's away all day," Richard said into the phone, jittery and high on a palpable, kinetic excitement. "I mean if you want to come over."

It'd been a favored fantasy for some time now: sneaking Jared over so they could do it in his and his partner's bed. Something Richard thought about a lot - maybe too much - jerked off to when he had a moment alone in the shower - clenched his eyes shut and thought about while he was face-down getting fucked on that very same, expansive mattress. Jared's long stretch of back, sharp shoulders, milk-white skin against sheets of deep blood red. 

It involved some orchestration. Slipping Jared through the gate, past the security cameras, in via the kitchen entrance, past the cruel and inquisitorial eyes of the housekeeper and the pool boy, both of whom he suspected - ever-faithful to his partner - would rather have seen Richard sent away.

He took Jared's hand, giggling viciously as he pulled him through the door into the master bedroom, helped him out of his clothes, and into bed.

"I, ah, ah, I," Richard stammered. Now that he had Jared here, exactly where he wanted, his overburdened brain had short-circuited. Could hardly conjure up the words to express what it was he was so eager to try. "Can you, like? Back up? Against the headboard? Could I just like, like - with my mouth, Birdie? Please?"

Jared did as he was told, feeling foolish and embarrassed and terribly, terribly decadent, the way he always did when someone wanted to perform this particular act on him. He let Richard take control. He pressed his eyes shut, willed himself not to open them, not under any circumstances, not to dare look at his surroundings at all. Not the satin sheets, not the fancy carpet, not the mahogany bed posts, not the wall-mounted mirror, not the excessively large portrait hanging directly over the bed. Jared imagined they were somewhere else - somewhere they could be, truly, openly, together - as Richard disappeared beneath the blankets, doing something a little sloppy but still spectacularly wonderful with his very wet, red mouth.

If Jared kept his eyes shut, he found, he could imagine they were anywhere.

\--

"I don't think that you should go this time," Jared tried once, at the end of an afternoon spent together, playing board games at his place. It hadn't been something he'd planned or even really intended on saying, but the sleeve of Richard's sweatshirt had ridden up just so over a rousing game of checkers, and Jared had found himself unable to avoid noticing the overripe contusion on his wrist.

"Go where," Richard asked, coldly, his focus rigid on the checkers board, refusing to look Jared in the eye. It was unspoken between them, for both of their sakes, that Richard's partner was not to be explicitly named or mentioned. It happened sometimes, and neither of them liked it when it did.

"Don't go home," Jared said. "Don't go back to him."

"And why's that?"

"Darling," Jared sighed. He glanced again to Richard's wrist. Flinched when Richard tugged on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. "The way he treats you. It's like - like that Tracy Chapman song!"

Richard set his piece back on the board. Finally, he looked up at Jared. "You know I can't just. Can't just - _do_ that."

"May I ask then? Does he make you happy? Only because I want to understand."

Richard dragged a hand through his hair. Exhaled through his teeth in frustration. "I don't - shit. No? I don't know. I mean, I don't know if that's the - is being happy even the point?" He looked at his phone. "You know what, I really have to go."

Jared wondered, that night on his too-small, uncomfortable futon, if Richard would give it all up - the money, the title, Pied Piper's success - if it meant that they could be together, but he halted that line of questioning before it went much further, knowing all too well the dark places it led. Jared might have been a romantic, yes, he might've had great and marvelous, terribly outsize dreams, but he wasn't entirely foolish. He knew that, for Richard, the sort of quiet happiness they shared would never be enough to satisfy him. Not when the man he was with threatened to take his algorithm - _his progeny! his child!_ \- and lock it up in a metal box on a server rack somewhere where no one would ever see or use or hear of it again if Richard left him.

 _Richard_ , he thought, aching, helpless, _oh Richard, Richard, both of us have holes like hungry, avaricious mouths inside us. I know you need success, need accolades, need your genius recognized to fill yours_.

Jared only wished to fill his with Richard.

\--

The thing was, Richard _had_ things now. Things he'd always wanted, and that Jared's steadfast, gentle guidance had never managed to provide. The things Richard wanted required a certain ruthlessness, a firm hand, a moral mutability, a willingness both to destroy all competition and to be oneself destroyed in order to attain them. Jared had been like that too, once. Had sworn off it all when he first ran away with Richard, and refused to go back there, no matter what it meant he had to lose. 

Fame, success, achievement. Richard's partner had given him these things. Pied Piper's file storage platform had reached one million downloads faster than anyone anticipated. Even now, its daily active user base was climbing, continuously, at a heretofore unprecedented growth rate. It was revolutionary, and everyone knew it. Exactly the thing Richard had wanted, to prove he was better than all the bullies and brogrammers and Stanford professors had ever given him credit for.

Richard tried, much as he could, to appreciate it. Tried not to ask himself questions like, _is this enough_ or, _am I happy_ , knowing that particular type of thought had never ended well for him. Wondering what would make him happy had only sent Richard into rages and panics, home from college with his tail between his legs and a prescription for Effexor. At night, in bed, on the ridiculously large, extravagant mattress, Richard would lay anxiously awake and wonder, would he give it all up if it meant he could be with Jared? Like really, like, for real?

No, he thought. He wouldn't.

Beside him in bed, his partner snored loudly, and Richard wondered what it said about him that he had chosen the one he did not love.

\--

It wasn't something he was proud of. Not something he'd write home about, much as his partner pressured him to. In fact, for as long as possible, Richard had kept his relationship a secret from his parents, and he intended - if he could, at least until the story in Wired came out next month - to keep it that way. Luckily, the weekend they'd planned to visit his partner was away at an executive retreat in Aspen, and Richard could introduce them to Jared - someone he longed for them to meet - rather than someone he was ashamed for them to even find out about.

"Come on," he insisted, when Jared worried his parents might not like him. "Of course they'll like you." He reached out to touch Jared's ear, and delighted in the way it made him shiver. _Ha!_ , he thought, and _mine!_ , inflated with pride to know Jared so fully, let in on all his stories and secrets, how he wanted to be touched, how he laughed and sobbed and shouted when he came, overtaken with emotion, how beautiful it was, the joy inherent in him. 

_Who wouldn't love you_ , Richard thought. _Bunch of poor fucking idiots_. 

"My mom will probably make you listen to gossip from her bingo night," Richard said, getting dressed and ready together, fixing their hair and brushing their teeth in Jared's dingy bathroom. "And I hope you like hearing my dad read out all the latest stats from his fucking Fitbit. I know he's trying to relate to me but. Christ."

It surprised Jared: how little Richard's parents seemed to know about him. He thought that, if he were lucky enough to have parents, certainly he would fill them in on every imaginable detail of his life. But, he learned quickly over dinner, Richard hadn't been home to visit in years, and rarely called or even emailed. Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks not only believed their son's relationship with his partner was strictly business-oriented, they seemed perfectly prepared to accept Jared as his boyfriend instead.

Richard's mother pulled him into a hug immediately upon meeting. Asked him questions about himself, his job, where he was from, if he had any particular recommendations from the restaurant's extensive wine list. Even all the things Richard had warned him about, Jared treasured, and it turned out there was nothing to be afraid of; he got along with Richard's parents marvelously.

Over appetizers, Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks were preparing to adopt Jared.

("You simply have to come for Christmas. I won't allow Richard to skip it again this year." "Hell, even if Richard skips it! Jared, promise us now you'll be there.")

Midway through the main course, they were hinting at engagement.

("A spring wedding in Tulsa would be just wonderful." "Whatever you do, don't you two dare elope on us, you hear?")

Over the dessert menu, they were picking out names for kids.

"If Richard were a girl," said Mrs. Hendricks, "he would have been Charlotte. Charlotte Elaine Hendricks. Isn't that a lovely name?"

Richard, blushing furiously, snapped, "we'd name her after Jared's mother." He clenched his teeth. Clutched possessively at Jared's hand beneath the table. "Julia," he said.

"Alright, dear. I was merely suggesting."

Jared, for his part, found he could say nothing. His throat felt tight, his eyes awash with tears, maybe a little maudlin on all the wine he didn't usually drink. Suddenly, this imaginary little girl felt just as real as he was, and he was desperate for it, for their theoretical future, for these things he'd never fully allowed himself to want. _I'm so selfish_ , he thought. _So terribly greedy. So unforgivably covetous for you, Richard. I want a life together. A real life. Darling. Please, please, tell me you want this_.

Is this what it would be like, he wondered. To be with Richard for real? Would they go to Tulsa for Christmas and summer holidays? Would they Skype with his parents? Bring Julia to visit? Send joint Mother's and Father's Day gifts?

When Mrs. Hendricks reached for the check and took out her wallet, Jared - knowing he could hardly afford to cover dinner for all of them - tried instinctively to stop her anyway.

"Oh no," she laughed, and oh, he thought, there was such beautiful music in it. "It's on us, dear. Of course. We're more than happy to treat you."

 _How did I ever get so lucky_ , Jared wondered, between her generosity, her acceptance, her kindness, Richard's leg brushing his under the table, Richard's wonderful hand on his. _What did I ever do to deserve this?_

"Thank you for coming," Richard said, into his ear, as the four of them stood outside, waiting for their respective Lyfts. And, "I liked seeing you with them," in the backseat of the car. And, "I'm so in love with you, Jared," as they stumbled through the door of his apartment, out of their clothes and into bed.

Their intimacy that night was sweet and tender, at first, and needy and necessary, later. They could barely keep their mouths off each other's, and they tried not to wonder whether that was because any single word spoken might be enough to break the spell. And for the first time in all the days they'd spent together, so caught up in the fantasy they forgot Richard's partner was meant to come home early the next morning, they fell asleep next to each other, and slept soundly in each other's arms all through the night. 

\--

Richard clicked his phone on somewhere around eight in the morning, Jared asleep and mumbling softly in German beside him.

Ten missed phone calls. Twenty vicious, angry texts. 

He never should've stayed over. He knew he would suffer for this.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright pals, we're back to the old whatever the heck is happening in this nonlinear timeline thing. Thank you to animesemplemcpherson and anactoriatalksback for reading this!

"I have" - Richard glanced to his watch, a gift from his partner, something he'd never quite gotten used to wearing, and he took it off and dropped it to the floor - "fifty-six minutes before I have to be downstairs for the wedding."

He let Jared back him up, thrilled at the way he towered over him, down the short hall and into the bedroom, directly to the center of the extravagant, king-sized bed. Richard looked up at Jared, wide-eyed and mouth-open with some combination of want and terror and an almost indescribable sort of relief, as if it were their first time all over. "I've missed you so much," said Jared. He removed his own tie and used it to bind Richard's wrists to the headboard - just the way he liked, he remembered - making quick work of the buttons on his shirt.

\--

It'd been over a month since their dinner with his parents, and all he'd heard from Richard were three brief and ominous texts:

>> Might be out of touch for a while.

>> He suspects. Having me followed.

>> And no I am not paranoid.

Jared tried to tell himself this sort of thing was inevitable. That he'd always seen it coming. That it was the price of being _the other woman_. Like Carrie Fisher in the beginning of When Harry Met Sally. Jared had always known he would not be the one chosen, however happy they were together, in the end. 

He looked at the things Richard had left behind in his apartment: the telescope he'd brought over, the hoodie he'd worn on their last night together, a battered copy of The Name of the Wind, that Richard had been reading out loud to him. Jared's own place was not his own now, just like his own life was not his own now; he'd made a space in it for Richard, and now it was a hole he couldn't fill with anything else. 

He lay awake at night, indulging his worst, most violent fantasies of revenge against Richard's partner. He imagined bursting into their mansion in the middle of some vicious argument. Strangling the man with his bare hands. Richard collapsing into his arms in gratitude after. Jared tried to forget, and he tried listening to a lot of Joni Mitchell, and he tried other people, but he couldn't bear to bring them back to his apartment, and being with them only made him feel more empty inside.

Jared could survive without Richard. He could survive without a lot of things, and he knew this from years of practice and experience. What he couldn't live with was knowing Richard was so unhappy, the way Richard's partner mistreated him, that Richard had chosen such misery over the happiness he could've had with him.

 _When Richard comes back_ , he thought, _if Richard comes back. You'll ask him to leave him this time_.

\--

"Whatever happened to that - what was his name - that cadaverous, tall freak you used to work with?"

"Ah. Dunno," Richard said.

"I always thought he had a," he smiled devilishly. "A bit of a thing for you, Richie."

"Oh." Richard set his fork down, aware of every minor movement. Of every twitch of his face. Of the way he was being observed, tested, and scrutinized. One thing he'd learned in his time with his partner was that nothing was ever what it seemed on the surface. His words always meant more than one thing. And he never asked a question he didn't already know the answer to. "Guess," Richard said. "Ah. Guess I, I, I don't know what kind of, uh, thing you're talking about."

His partner slapped his hand down on the table. Made the wine glasses jump in place. "Don't play dumb with me," he said, "Richard. My little boy genius, you know what the fuck I meant. He. Wanted. To. Fuck. You."

He got out of his seat, walked across the room toward Richard. Stood behind him, over his chair, menacingly.

"Do you still have his number," he asked.

"I - ah - "

"Don't lie to me. I know you do."

Richard was going to take his phone out, his partner said. He was going to call Jared. He was going to tell him that he'd lost, how much better off Richard was now, how good his partner was to him, how he gave him things Jared that never could or did.

"And I'm going to fuck you," his partner said, "while you do it."

So Richard lied and lied, into the phone, and he thought of Jared on the other side, in his dirty, cheap apartment. Probably crying, because Richard had broken his heart. He thought of how Jared could never have a real life, a full life, as long as he continued his association with him. He thought of all the money, the stock options Jared had given up rather than follow Richard to his new life, his new company. He thought of all the work his friends had done for him for nothing, and how he no longer had the right to call them his friends. Richard was a poison. He had ruined the lives of everyone around him. And this, this, was the only way he could atone.

Jared hung up the phone without speaking.

Richard waited for it to be over. His partner pounding at him. He bit down hard into his lip.

\--

The worst of the storm had passed, Richard felt it. The grip on his neck loosening, the length of his leash being slowly let out. He sensed that if he placated his partner with his obedience, with his passivity, his body bent over the desk, his face pressed into the mattress, if he let him monitor his phone, and let his driver track his movements, if he said the words his partner scripted, and wore the clothes his partner had picked out, eventually he would grow bored of it. And finally, he did. 

>> Birdie.

>> Can I come over? 

>> Can't I see you?

>> To apologize at least?

>> Fine if you don't want that.

Jared watched his phone. He let the texts sit unreplied to, and then blocked Richard's number. Tried not to listen to the cruel words that had been replaying, for weeks now, in his head. He went to checkers night, and book club, and he led his birding group for at-risk teens. His life went on, for a time, without Richard in it, and Jared tried to fill the hole where he had been with other things.

One day Jared was carrying some groceries into his apartment, when Richard appeared unannounced on his doorstep. Jared thought of all the things he wanted to say, how he wanted Richard to leave his partner, how much it'd hurt to see them together on that magazine cover, knowing Richard's parents would probably see it too. How he didn't want to do this anymore unless they could be together for real. But faced with Richard - so beautiful and so miserable, looking like he expected to be told to frick off back to where he came from right then and there - all the words Jared longed to say died in his mouth.

They were kissing before they made it through the doorway. 

"Oh lord, I've missed you," Jared murmured, into the curve of Richard's neck.

"I've missed _this_ ," gasped Richard, as Jared knelt between his legs.

 _I'll take what I can get_ , thought Jared. _Even if it's only this. Just please, Richard, please, don't mention him. Let me have this fantasy, please._

"Holy shit it's better with you," said Richard, panting, his back arching up off the thin futon mattress, fingers clawing into green flannel sheets.

\--

Jared worked at a nature center now, he said, outside Philadelphia. Forty minutes had passed - sixteen left before the wedding - and they were laying together, messy and satiated, atop the luxurious Palace Hotel sheets. He was consulting on the side for a number of promising tri-state area start-ups, he said, but his heart wasn't really in it.

"I don't think I could ever feel that way again," said Jared. He traced his fingers over the protruding knobs of Richard's spine, through his nice, splayed-open white dress shirt. "The way I did about Pied Piper. About us. The way I do about you."

 _God_ , thought Richard, and he thought of how he felt about this - about Jared - and everything else paled. _God_ , he thought, _me neither_.

Jared had taken a payout from a particularly lucrative consulting gig and bought the house that used to be his mother's, and returned to the east coast of his youth. Restoring it was a rewarding job, he said, but a big one, something he could use some help with. Jared had adopted a cat, he said. He'd bought a small piano. He was eating well, sleeping adequately, seeing a good therapist, once and sometimes twice a week. He'd mostly made peace with the past, he said. With his childhood, with his family. With what happened between them. A couple of semi-serious relationships, he said, but his heart hadn't been in them either.

It occurred to Richard then, that for how long and how fiercely he had loved Jared - because, really, he saw that he had never stopped, not even for a second - he had never understood him. He had never really tried. He never asked the right questions, shied away in terror of his own inadequacy from the harder, more uncomfortable truths. 

He was so grateful to have another chance that he grabbed Jared's hand from where it rested on the bed, raised it to his mouth, and kissed - reverently - each one of his knuckles.

"Let's do this," he said, between kisses. "Me and you. Fuck this wedding. Fuck this tuxedo. Fuck this whole place." He picked his bowtie up from where it had landed, before, down near the footboard, and tossed it across the room for dramatic effect.

"Oh," said Jared.

"Oh - what?"

"Oh Richard. I'm almost afraid to say how badly I want that, but I - "

"Good, good!" Richard exclaimed, frenetic. He began to rush around the room, half-dressed, throwing his things haphazardly into a suitcase. "Perfect! We both want this. What are we still doing here? Let's - come on, let's get the fuck out of this place."

"Richard, darling," Jared said, and his voice was suddenly so grave, so serious. It was a tone Richard recognized from their days at Pied Piper and it stopped him in his tracks, froze him cold with terror: Jared's bad news voice. "I couldn't break up your wedding."

"Then why," Richard said. "Why did you even show up here?"


End file.
